


and the words so sweet

by buhnebeest



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Fluff and Crack, M/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 12:32:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1173110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buhnebeest/pseuds/buhnebeest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The downside of Bones never reading the Lovehearts is that he <i>never reads the fucking Lovehearts.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	and the words so sweet

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Februari 14th 2011 [at my journal.](http://buhnebeest.livejournal.com/3969.html#cutid1)
> 
> This is a fill for  jim_and_bones's [Sweetheart Challenge](http://community.livejournal.com/jim_and_bones/353467.html).

  
  
  
Jim has had some awesome ideas in his life, like that time he drove his dad’s car of the cliff (still in his top five of best adrenaline rushes ever), or like that time he figured out how to get Scotty to stop sleeping in the Engine Room because his own quarters were stocked with illegal substances (‘to condone’ is a magical verb and should apply to everything that is bad for you in the best ways), or that time he saved earth from imploding (that little brainfart got him a starship and everything).  
  
Jim’s current idea is particularly inspired, however.  
  
It just… doesn’t really go according to plan.  
  
**  
  
“Bones, can I talk to you in your office for a minute?”  
  
Smooth, easy. Just nice and casual.  
  
“Sure, Jim, but make it quick, I have a goddamn ton of paperwork after I’m through with those idiot crewman messing with the defibrillators. And don’t even think about sending them to Spock, this scolding’s all mine.” Bones looks tremendously gleeful at this. Jim is too nervous to even know what the hell he’s talking about.  
  
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” he says automatically. “Come on.”  
  
Bones’s office is familiar, and Jim has fond memories of it. He kissed Bones for the first time in this office. He gave Bones a blowjob for the first time in this office. He fucked Bones for the first time in this office. Had him bent over the desk, and Bones had moaned so prettily for him; he remembers every decibel in loving detail. All of those things happened in the same hour, by the way, totally in that order. Jim is a rock star.   
  
“Jim?” Bones asks, tone suggesting he might have said it a few times already without any success. “Jim, make it quick, I ain’t got all day.”  
  
Jim clears his throat and straightens. He is a rock star and can totally do this.  
  
“I have something for you,” he says, taking the little heart from his pocket, marked with a pleading order. Jim had considered putting a question mark behind it, before deciding that would make him seem uncertain. He puts the sweet in Bones’s hand, uncomfortably aware of the fact his heart is slamming undignified rhythms into his sternum.  
  
Bones raises an eyebrow, smiles, pops the candy into his mouth.  
  
“Thanks, Jim.” He presses a sugary kiss to Jim’s lips and heads back to his patients. “See you tonight,” he calls over his shoulder.  
  
Jim stares after him for a moment, a little shocked.  
  
“But-” he says.  
  
**  
  
So, that was… remarkably anti-climactic.  Jim doesn’t really know what to do with this. This, being nothing. Jim is very good at knowing what to do when there is something going on. But you can’t really do something unless there is something going on that needs something to be done. So when there’s nothing going on and thusly nothing to be done, Jim doesn’t know what to do.  
  
Jim is not pleased by this.  
  
Obviously, his first attempt at proposing to Bones via Loveheart failed, due to Bones being a sugar-whore. Jim should have foreseen this, as he is quite aware of Bones’s love for all things sweet, stemming from his Georgian childhood induced love for peach cobbler and expanding monstrously from there. Jim just forgets it sometimes, because Bones seems too prickly to enjoy sweet things. Jim often indulges in picturing Bones chewing tobacco all day as he stares down the intruding children on his lawn from up his porch. Just for the hell of it.  
  
Anyway, so his plan didn’t work. But Jim is still convinced of the brilliance of it, because Bones loves sugar and Jim loves Bones, which makes announcing his marital purposes via candy the perfect combination.  
  
Also he still has a lot of leftover blank Lovehearts, and it seems sort of wasteful to not use them for their purpose.  
  
So he should just… keep doing it?  
  
**  
  
Jim keeps doing it.  
  
He becomes an absolute expert in all carving-words-into-candy related things. The E in the ME looked a little wonky on the first Loveheart, but Jim’s had practice now and it looks fantastic: perfect straight lines and exact proportions, the middle vertical line in exactly the right spot. His R’s in the MARRY look gorgeous; the playful curve of the little half circle and the abrupt stop of the little diagonal. Jim is actually impressed with himself, because he’s got about a centimeter of candy to work with here and he’s rocking it. By the seventieth heart Jim’s eye for detail even beats that of Chekov, who is honestly shocked when Jim points out a mistake in the embroidery of the Scyllian solar system he’s working on in his spare time, if his jumping eyebrows are anything to go by.  
  
This is the upside of Bones never reading the Lovehearts.  
  
The downside of Bones never reading the Lovehearts is that _he never reads the fucking Lovehearts._  
  
It’s driving Jim close to a nervous breakdown, which is pretty impressive considering Jim usually deals with a lot more nerve-racking things on a daily basis, like facing off battle-hungry Klingons and negotiating hostage-/civil war-/personal boundary altering pollen- situations and fighting man-eating jellyfish-type creatures.  
  
Day after day, Jim leaves the Lovehearts everywhere. He puts one in Bones’s uniform pants’ pocket every morning; in the sock drawer; in the bathroom cabinet next to the toothpaste; next to the PADD Bones keeps on the nightstand. When they meet for lunch Jim gives him one after eating and endures Bones’s sugary kiss when they part. When Bones comes to the Bridge to nag to Jim about his day under the unlikely guise of giving Jim status reports, Jim gives him a Loveheart from the stash he has inauspiciously hidden by his Captain’s chair. When Jim goes to Sickbay after his shifts he always brings two pieces, one to keep Bones from complaining about Jim interrupting him and the other because Jim is optimistic and likes to think Bones might accidentally read the second one if he’s still sucking on the first. Mostly Bones just takes the second one before the first is even properly swallowed.  
  
When they have alternate shifts Jim makes sure to leave a heart on Bones’s pillow before he leaves, face up, message showing clearly, increasingly desperately (MARRY ME).  
  
When they go to sleep together Jim gives him one right before he orders the lights off, and every time he has to watch Bones pop it into his mouth with the corners of his mouth curved up in delight Jim wants to yell at him and kiss him at the same time.  
  
**  
  
“Fuck, why am I still doing this?” he exclaims, hiding in Spock’s quarters because Spock is his First and therefore obliged to offer him shelter and guidance in his times of need.  
  
He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the room, an open bag of blank Lovehearts next to him and his pocketknife in his right hand, snapped open and ready for action. In front of him is a pile of finished hearts, the perfect picture of a cutesy romantic gesture. Jim glares at their mocking heart-shaped selves. Jim’s heart doesn’t even look anything like that.  
  
Spock sighs and looks up from the game of Scrabble he’s playing with Uhura.  
  
“You expressed an interest in proposing marriage to Doctor McCoy,” he says gravely, arranging a few of his letters on the board. “You specified that your methods would have to be exceedingly and uncharacteristically romantic, as that would tip the odds of an affirmative answer into your favor. I believe your exact words were: ‘this lovey-dovey shit will totally shock him into saying “yes”’.”  
  
Jim winces. “Please don’t quote things I say. It creeps me out.”  
  
“Of course, Captain.”  
  
Uhura snorts and jots down Spock’s score, which is apparently so unimpressive both of Spock’s eyebrows rise in displeasure. He grabs the little leather bag for new letters, almost resignedly, because Uhura is already gleefully dropping all of her seven letters onto the board. Cumquat, on a triple word score. Hot.  
  
“Additionally,” Spock continues, eyeing his new letters a little sulkily, “you acquired an ample supply of these so-called Lovehearts from the Ambassador of the Tro’Kla province, and unsure of what else to use them for, as you yourself dislike their taste.”  
  
Uhura leans back in her chair, smirking the smirk of the victorious, and then fixes an amused look on Jim.  
  
“You can still just ask him, Jim,” she says. “He’ll say yes, I promise. This candy-thing is adorable, but right now you’re cutting into my alone-time with Spock.”  
  
Jim rolls his eyes, “Come on, you’re not even doing anything! You’re playing board games.”  
  
Spock raises an eyebrow.  
  
“Because you are in my quarters, Captain.”  
  
Uhura pops one of his MARRY ME-hearts into her mouth, a pink one. She grins at his glare, completely unaffected.  
  
“Just ask him, Captain.” she says, “Because the scale is about to tip over from adorable to pathetic.”  
  
“Thanks, Uhura.”  
  
**  
  
The problem is that Jim doesn’t know how to behave around Bones right now. Maybe ‘behave’ is not the right word, because being around Bones is easy, it’s the best thing in the world, and Jim always knows how to behave around Bones. Just – like himself.  
  
The problem is that Jim has proposed – eighty-two times and counting – and Bones doesn’t know about it. Jim wanted to take this big step in their relationship together and Bones is out of the loop.  
  
And Uhura is right, he could just ask. He could just stop with the Lovehearts and use his words, which would conveniently get him an answer as well as solve his problem on where he’s going to get new Lovehearts when his supply runs out.  
  
Except.  
  
Maybe Jim just wants to be romantic sometimes.  
  
**  
  
It’s been twenty-five days of proposals when Jim finally cracks. When put like that, it doesn’t seem like a lot, but his confidence is really starting to dwindle here, and he was nervous to begin with. This limbo of uncertainty is just too horrible to function in properly, so, when he gives Bones his third Loveheart on the twenty-fifth day, Jim really can’t be blamed for reaching a limit.  
  
Bones pops it into his mouth and starts for the door, but stops when Jim makes a strangled sound of frustration and knocks his head against the wall.  
  
“Jim? You okay?”  
  
And Jim is really not okay, Jim has failed as a rock star and just really wants Bones to read the damn hearts already.  
  
“Fucking hell, Bones, would you read the damn hearts already?” he half-shouts, half-begs.  
  
Bones blinks at him, then starts to reach for his mouth, presumably to take out the heart already in there to check it - god, what even. Jim smacks him on the wrist.  
  
“Not that one, that one’s melted! Here-” He thrusts another carefully crafted piece of candy in Bones’ general direction and promptly suffers from a mild panic breakdown. Fuck, Bones is gonna read it now-  
  
He makes a lurching attempt to grab the heart back, but Bones has already seen it, he’s read it; his eyebrows are really dangerously close to his hairline. Why does everyone around Jim communicate with their eyebrows, Jim doesn’t know what that means, argh-  
  
“Aw hell, Jim, I feel bad now.”  
  
Jim’s heart punches him in the ribcage.  
  
Why? Why would he feel bad? Is it because he’d rather have gone on eating all of Jim’s proposal candy and inevitably getting poisoned by artificial sweetening than having to answer Jim’s proposal candy? Is Bones addicted to the candy and afraid Jim will stop giving it to him now that the reason for his candy-dealing charity is out in the open? What if Bones will only marry Jim if he keeps providing him with sweets? Is that really the foundation Jim wants his marriage based on? He would totally go for that deal, but still-  
  
“You’ve been giving me these for weeks.” Bones says, stepping closer.  
  
Oh, Jim knows that. Jim knows all about that.  
  
“Did all of them say the same thing?”  
  
Jim nods, a little sullenly. He’s carved the words MARRY ME in two hundred and ninety-three Lovehearts. He decides to share this fact aloud and make Bones aware of his dedication, hoping it will count in his favor.  
  
“I carved the words ‘marry me’ in two hundred and ninety-three Lovehearts,” he mutters. He feels inexplicably silly, like Bones is now accurately picturing him bending over freaking candy for hours.  
  
“Very dedicated,” Bones says. He’s smiling, which Jim will take as a good sign.  
  
“Yeah, I… thought it would be nice. Romantic.”  
  
Bones is grinning full out now, to which Jim feels the corners of his own mouth curl up, almost Pavlovian; when Bones is happy Jim is happy, even if he still doesn't have his goddamn answer. He should get on that.  
  
“Well?” he asks, smiling winningly now, because all signs point to a profitable outcome here; Bones is moving closer, curling a hand around the back of Jim’s neck, stroking through the short hair there, and he’s tugging Jim close. Bones says, “Why yes, Jim, I’ll marry you, nice of you to ask,” and his lips taste like sugar and victory.


End file.
